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| 14 | ISSUE 572 MAY 2015
N
ot long after our
first daughter
was born, I
remember
seeing her on the
exam table in the
doctor’s office, lying on her back, with
the white paper crinkling underneath
her. She was soft and small and fragile.
I remember watching the needle
pierce her leg, and feeling a strange
mix of guilt and relief. There was a
slight delay before her face changed
and her scream filled the room. As a
father, I cringed.
In 2006, there were rumours about
mercury in the injections and some
possible link with autism. My wife and
I had heard them. With the anxiety
of all new parents, we wanted, more
than anything, to keep our daughter
from harm. But sorting through the
opinions and anecdotes and research
was overwhelming. We were torn
between fear, belief and trust.
Fortunately, we had a good doctor
we trusted, who assured us the shots
didn’t contain mercury and that they
posed no risk of autism. We believed
her. We were too exhausted to do
much more than that. Things might
have been harder if we’d felt differently
about our doctor, or about Western
medicine, or about the world. But we
didn’t. We just did our best. Today our
daughter is healthy and thriving. For
that we’re grateful. Yet a surprising
number of new parents in my
generation don’t feel the way we did.
They don’t believe their doctors. And
they haven’t come to see vaccinations
as an obvious, logical, low-risk choice.
Part of this reluctance initially
stemmed from a paper published in
the medical journal The Lancet in
1998, which implied that the measles/
mumps/rubella vaccine caused autism
and bowel disease. The study was small,
with only 12 subjects, and its results
were never reproduced. The Lancet
eventually retracted it. The paper’s
lead author, Andrew Wakefield, was
found to have committed deliberate
fraud and was barred from practising
medicine in the United Kingdom. But
it was too late: A movement had
started, headed by parents (some of
them celebrities) who were, most of
all, afraid.
Today, much more is known. There
is no detectable link between vaccines
and autism. Yet no matter how many
studies come to this conclusion, it
doesn’t seem to matter. The anti-
vaccine campaign tapped into a deep
anxiety about science, the world and
our place within it.
Resistance to vaccination is not
a new thing: Anti-vaccination
movements gained momentum in
Britain in the early 1800s almost as
soon as the practice was established.
A backlash arose on this side of the
Atlantic as well, with the formation
of the Anti-Vaccination Society of
America and the Anti-Vaccination
League of New York City in the late
1800s. Some people simply didn’t
believe vaccination worked. Some
feared it caused eczema. Others felt it
was un-Christian.
The word inoculate originally meant
“to graft” or “implant” from the Latin
oculus, meaning “eye” or “bud”. But
THE
VINDICATION
OF
VACCINATION
It’s crucial not only for your
children, but for all children
By Frank Bures, The Rotarian
“Many anti-
vaccination
advocates argue that
immunisation is a
personal choice that
affects only them. But
this decision affects
our entire society.”